The Register Citizen (Torrington, CT)
FuelCell Energy move buys time
Stock sale helps company make turnaround
After warning this summer of a possible bankruptcy, FuelCell Energy bought itself additional time to effect a turnaround, raising cash in a sale of stock that has sunk to a fraction of its value of a year ago.
FuelCell produces power systems that emit no harmful pollutants, generating electricity through a chemical process.
The company has its headquarters in Danbury and its main production plant in Torrington.
Last month, FuelCell appointed as CEO Jason Few, a board member who previously held executive roles with NRG Energy. The company had been led for several years by Chip Bottone, whom FuelCell’s board let go in June, installing its general counsel to run the company on an interim basis.
FuelCell did not hold a conference call with investment analysts this week to review its quarterly results, with the company issuing a written statement from Few describing the company’s performance as “dynamic” during the period, but with the company maintaining a “going concern” warning of the possibility of insolvency, in a formal filing with the U.S. Securities & Exchange Commission.
Under Bottone, FuelCell had negotiated a series of loan agreements to provide cash for FuelCell to run its operations, even as the company continued to rack up quarterly losses amid declining revenue.
After extending a loan with Hercules Capital, FuelCell had indicated it could trigger a default on the package this month, which could in turn empower other lenders to do the same.
FuelCell for now has dodged that scenario by finding investors for more than 34 million shares of stock, which it sold through investment banks Oppenheimer and B. Riley FBR at 42 cents apiece for gross proceeds of $14.6 million.
In an SEC filing, FuelCell reported that it has paid $2.1 million of that amount to Hercules, a Palo Alto, Calif. firm that focuses its lending both on technology companies and those attempting to engineer turnarounds under financial duress.
FuelCell anticipates paying Hercules an additional $2.2 million next week, leaving it with $1.4 million due under that loan.
Reporting an $8.3 million loss for its third fiscal quarter ending in July, FuelCell reported cash reserves at month’s end of about $16 million that was unrestricted by any loan covenants restricting how the company uses that money.
The company lists $121 million in debt obligations. That includes $10 million due the state of Connecticut as part of a financing package that had supported hiring in Danbury and Torrington prior to the company cutting 135 jobs earlier this year, paying no severance to employees and leaving it with about 425 people in all.
FuelCell has gone six months without selling a fuel cell power plant, though this week it reported $22.7 million in revenue over the three months spanning May through July. That revenue is the result of license agreements and electricity sales from a Bridgeport power plant it acquired recently from Dominion.
In August, the U.S. Department of Energy announced a $2 million contract for FuelCell to continue development of a “reversible” fuel cell system that could store electricity generated by wind turbines, analogous to a rechargeable battery.